


in your hands

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Series: acts of intimacy [6]
Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Healing, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 00:15:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11978088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: “You seem very big to be a housecat,” she says, lightly. “And I don’t think I can handle having another mouth to feed.”





	in your hands

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Kinzie. Prompt: head scratches.

When she was a little girl, it had been the cats, stealing through the long evening shadows in the yard behind the priory. There’d been a grey one, and a calico, and a yellow one with jagged stripes, coming close to butt their heads against her open palms. Closing their eyes and purring as she scratched them each gently under the chin.

 _Huh, strange,_ one of the older girls had remarked, as they hung out the wash together one morning. No cats to be found in any corner, however persistently Tatiana’s gaze wandered behind rocks, along the paths the tree branches made, tangling together. Just white sheets unfolding, row on row on the clothesline, fluttering like wings when the breeze blew by. _They don’t come when anyone else calls them, you know—not even Mother, and she sets out food for them._ When Tatiana looked at her with a wrinkled brow, she’d winked and added, _Maybe you have a gift._

She still remembers that now, years later, when the children at the orphanage come to her seeking kisses for their skinned knees and their bruised elbows, when one of her neighbors calls her into town to help soothe a fever or set a fractured bone. It only grows as the seasons pass, this certitude held so dear by everyone she feels lucky to be loved by— _there’s a gift you have, Tatiana._ Some spark of magic in her touch, the wild and holy kind you can’t simply pull from a book, no matter how much midnight oil you burn. The children have names for it, and for her: Sister Tatiana, Tatiana Silverhands, Tatiana Lifegiver, as though she were a hero from the old songs.

She smiles her gratitude for the praise, folds up the words and keeps them all close to her heart. She doesn’t believe she has any great talents, herself. Only sincerity, and sometimes—some very rare times—that’s enough, to see people safe wherever they go. To mend a hurt, to quiet a restless mind.

That’s all it is. That’s all she says it is when the women come to her door asking about the man who’d nearly drowned in the spring—the handsome one who’d washed up on their beach, it seemed, expressly for her to find. It was like something out of a story, and _how lucky you are, Tatiana, to be the kind of person stories happen to._ No rancor in it, of course, no real envy; only a sparkle, knowing and fond and wry. _Of course he would choose you too._

If anyone is special, it’s him. His name—Zeke, Ezekiel—is a gift from the emperor himself, and he looks like the kind of knight who rides with emperors, tall and strong and golden-haired. She doesn’t feel like the kind of person stories happen to, but she looks at him and knows for true that he is. He must be. It just so happened that his story had been that he was dying, for reasons neither of them yet know, and that she had not so much brought him back to life as given him a place to live; quietly, safely, waiting for him to gain the strength to take his place in its pages again.

It’s rare that stories start so quietly, she thinks, as she watches the days deepening toward winter. It’s evening again, and he is fresh from cutting wood for the fire she’s just coaxed him to lie beside, curled loosely on a nest of blankets on the floor, letting her cradle his head in her lap. She is sketching the shape of him—the fine, gentle curl to his hair, the curve of his skull under her fingertips—and he closes his eyes and hums under her touch, low in the throat. The sound is a little like the murmuring of the tide, but a little like a cat’s purr, too, when it trusts her enough to let her close.

“You seem very big to be a housecat,” she says, lightly. “And I don’t think I can handle having another mouth to feed.”

He answers with a smile, warm and secret in the light of the fire, and brings her hand to his lips. The truth is this is the first time she feels chosen—special, touched by magic—but she doesn’t need to tell anyone that.


End file.
